Sunday, May 07, 2017

At the trial of Roy Oliver, the police officer charged with the murder of Jordan Edwards, they need to exclude neo-Confederate jurors.

The following reporting on the shooting of Balch Springs, Texas teenager Jordan Edwards brings up many details I haven't seen before.

After Jordan Edwards was shot by the police and his brothers saw Jordan bleed out, they were handcuffed. As is often the case, I found this information about the handcuffs in a news source outside of Dallas.

It turns out that the police chief had to state a retraction of Roy Oliver's claim that the car was backing aggressively towards them because the video showed that it was some young people trying to leave a bad situation. How many other times was Roy Oliver's testimony not really true? How many people have been convicted?

One thing I think should be done, if a police officer is caught out with testimony or an account at great variance with the facts, we don't have to decided whether it is lying, all court cases where the testimony of the officer was critical to the conviction need to be thrown out and the prisoner is still in jail released immediately. Traffic tickets should be subject to an immediate refund.

I think that one reason contributing to police officers being let off the hook is that jurors with racial attitudes, especially those with racial attitudes that they don't recognize as such are allowed on juries and they find some rational to let these violent officers off the hook.

When I in jury selections they will ask if anyone is a white supremacist or a member of a white supremacist group. No one leaves. Though there shouldn't be any white supremacists on a jury, this question should be recognized as incompetent or an avoidance of asking the critical questions to exclude people with racial attitudes.

The chances of a person who is self-identified white supremacist is rather small. The chances of a person with racial attitudes is rather high, probably a large percentage. What needs to be done is to have questions to screen out these individuals so that they are not in the jury and in particular they can be screen out with cause.

The attorneys are allow to screen out a few jurors without cause. This means usually the attorney for whom it is advantages screens out all the African American jurors and the jury ends up being biased against African Americans.

I think one question to screen out jurors should be "Have you ever used the expression, 'I am not prejudiced, but ...'" In Dallas, Texas after asking that question you might have a greatly reduced pool of white jurors left over from the screening.

I think historical questions would be good to identify attitudes. I think that it should be asked whether the person is a member or has been a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, United Daughters of the Confederacy, Dallas Southern Memorial Association, Children of the Confederacy, League of the South, and Council of Conservative Citizens.

Further it should be asked if they participate in any Confederate re-enactor unit.

But most importantly their attitudes towards the Confederate flag, monuments and the Confederacy itself should be inquired. I think it would go a long way towards excluding persons who say, "I am not prejudiced, but ..." or have racial attitudes.

Dr. Euan Hague and I propose this in this online Black Commentator article.

For example, a majority of Americans don't think the Confederate flag is racist. I think excluding these individuals would go a long way to correcting the composition of a jury.

Other lines of historical questioning could be done also. I don't think support for the Confederacy is the only thing. Did the person think Africans were benefited by being brought over from Africa? I run into this sometimes in Dallas.

Right now we are on track to having a trial where Roy Oliver will be acquitted.